The History of Rome, Book V - Theodor Mommsen
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Bearing of Caesar towards the Parties
However much Caesar was wont to treat all things relating
to his personal safety with daring indifference, he could not possibly
conceal from himself the very serious danger with which this mass
of malcontents threatened not merely himself but also his creations.
If nevertheless, disregarding all the warning and urgency
of his friends, he without deluding himself as to the implacability
of the very opponents to whom he showed mercy, persevered
with marvellous composure and energy in the course of pardoning
by far the greater number of them, he did so neither
from the chivalrous magnanimity of a proud, nor from the sentimental
clemency of an effeminate, nature, but from the correct statesmanly
consideration that vanquished parties are disposed of
more rapidly and with less public injury by their absorption
within the state than by any attempt to extirpate them by proscription
or to eject them from the commonwealth by banishment. Caesar could not
for his high objects dispense with the constitutional party itself,
which in fact embraced not the aristocracy merely but all the elements
of a free and national spirit among the Italian burgesses;
for his schemes, which contemplated the renovation of the antiquated
state, he needed the whole mass of talent, culture, hereditary,
and self-acquired distinction, which this party embraced;
and in this sense he may well have named the pardoning of his opponents
the finest reward of victory. Accordingly the most prominent chiefs
of the defeated parties were indeed removed, but full pardon
was not withheld from the men of the second and third rank
and especially of the younger generation; they were not, however,
allowed to sulk in passive opposition, but were by more or less
gentle pressure induced to take an active part in the new administration,
and to accept honours and offices from it. As with Henry the Fourth
and William of Orange, so with Caesar his greatest difficulties began
only after the victory. Every revolutionary conqueror learns
by experience that, if after vanquishing his opponents he would
not remain like Cinna and Sulla a mere party-chief, but would
like Caesar, Henry the Fourth, and William of Orange substitute
the welfare of the commonwealth for the necessarily one-sided programme
of his own party, for the moment all parties, his own as well as
the vanquished, unite against the new chief; and the more so,
the more great and pure his idea of his new vocation. The friends
of the constitution and the Pompeians, though doing homage
with the lips to Caesar, bore yet in heart a grudge either
at monarchy or at least at the dynasty; the degenerate democracy
was in open rebellion against Caesar from the moment of its perceiving
that Caesar's objects were by no means its own; even the personal
adherents of Caesar murmured, when they found that their chief was
establishing instead of a state of condottieri a monarchy equal
and just towards all, and that the portions of gain accruing to them
were to be diminished by the accession of the vanquished.
This settlement of the commonwealth was acceptable to no party,
and had to be imposed on his associates no less than on his opponents.
Caesar's own position was now in a certain sense more imperilled
than before the victory; but what he lost, the state gained.
By annihilating the parties and not simply sparing the partisans
but allowing every man of talent or even merely of good descent
to attain to office irrespective of his political past, he gained
for his great building all the working power extant in the state;
and not only so, but the voluntary or compulsory participation of men
of all parties in the same work led the nation also over imperceptibly
to the newly prepared ground. The fact that this reconciliation
of the parties was for the moment only externaland that they were
for the present much less agreed in adherence to the new state of things
than in hatred against Caesar, did not mislead him; he knew well
that antagonisms lose their keenness when brought into such outward union,
and that only in this way can the statesman anticipate the work of time,
which alone is able finally to heal such a strife by laying
the old generation in the grave. Still less did he inquire who hated him
or meditated his assassination. Like every genuine statesman he served
not the people for reward--not even for the reward of their love--
but sacrificed the favour of his contemporaries for the blessing
of posterity, and above all for the permission to save
and renew his nation.
Caesar's Work
In attempting to give a detailed account of the mode in which
the transition was effected from the old to the new state of things,
we must first of all recollect that Caesar came not to begin,
but to complete. The plan of a new polity suited to the times,
long ago projected by Gaius Gracchus, had been maintained
by his adherents and successors with more or less of spirit and success,
but without wavering. Caesar, from the outset and as it were
by hereditary right the head of the popular party, had for thirty years
borne aloft its banner without ever changing or even so much
as concealing his colours; he remained democrat even when monarch.
as he accepted without limitation, apart of course from the preposterous
projects of Catilina and Clodius, the heritage of his party;
as he displayed the bitterest, even personal, hatred to the aristocracy
and the genuine aristocrats; and as he retained unchanged
the essential ideas of Roman democracy, viz. alleviation of the burdens
of debtors, transmarine colonization, gradual equalization
of the differences of rights among the classes belonging
to the state, emancipation of the executive power from the senate:
his monarchy was so little at variance with democracy,
that democracy on the contrary only attained its completion
and fulfilment by means of that monarchy. For this monarchy
was not the Oriental despotism of divine right, but a monarchy such as
Gaius Gracchus wished to found, such as Pericles and Cromwell founded--
the representation of the nation by the man in whom it puts
supreme and unlimited confidence. The ideas, which lay
at the foundation of Caesar's work, were so far not strictly new;
but to him belongs their realization, which after all is everywhere
the main matter; and to him pertains the grandeur of execution,
which would probably have surprised the brilliant projector himself
if he could have seen it, and which has impressed, and will
always impress, every one to whom it has been presented in the living
reality or in the mirror of history--to whatever historical epoch
or whatever shade of politics he may belong--according
to the measure of his ability to comprehend human and historical
greatness, with deep and ever-deepening emotion and admiration.
At this point however it is proper expressly once for all to claim
what the historian everywhere tacitly presumes, and to protest
against the custom--common to simplicity and perfidy--of using
historical praise and historical censure, dissociated
from the given circumstances, as phrases of general application,
and in the present case of construing the judgment as to Caesar
into a judgment as to what is called Caesarism. It is true
that the history of past centuries ought to be the instructress
of the present; but not in the vulgar sense, as if one could simply
by turning over the leaves discover the conjunctures of the present
in the records of the past, and collect from these the symptoms
for a political diagnosis and the specifics for a prescription;
it is instructive only so far as the observation of older forms
of culture reveals the organic conditions of civilization generally--
the fundamental forces everywhere alike, and the manner of their
combination everywhere different--and leads and encourages men,
not to unreflecting imitation, but to independent reproduction.
In this sense the history of Caesar and of Roman Imperialism,
with all the unsurpassed greatness of the master-worker,
with all the historical necessity of the work, is in truth
a sharper censure of modern autocracy than could be written
by the hand of man. According to the same law of nature in virtue
of which the smallest organism infinitely surpasses the most artistic
machine, every constitution however defective which gives play
to the free self-determination of a majority of citizens infinitely
surpasses the most brilliant and humane absolutism; for the former
is capable of development and therefore living, the latter is what it is
and therefore dead. This law of nature has verified itself
in the Roman absolute military monarchy and verified itself
all the more completely, that, under the impulse of its creator's genius
and in the absence of all material complications from without,
that monarchy developed itself more purely and freely
than any similar state. From Caesar's time, as the sequel will show
and Gibbon has shown long ago, the Roman system had only an external
coherence and received only a mechanical extension, while internally
it became even with him utterly withered and dead. If in the early
stages of the autocracy and above all in Caesar's own soul(5)
the hopeful dream of a combination of free popular development
and absolute rule was still cherished, the government of the highly-
gifted emperors of the Julian house soon taught men in a terrible form
how far it was possible to hold fire and water in the same vessel.
Caesar's work was necessary and salutary, not because it was
or could be fraught with blessing in itself, but because--
with the national organization of antiquity, which was based on slavery
and was utterly a stranger to republican-constitutional representation,
and in presence of the legitimate urban constitution which in the course
of five hundred years had ripened into oligarchic absolutism--
absolute military monarchy was the copestone logically necessary
and the least of evils. When once the slave-holding aristocracy
in Virginia and the Carolinas shall have carried matters as far as
their congeners in the Sullan Rome, Caesarism will there too
be legitimized at the bar of the spirit of history;(6)
where it appears under other conditions of development, it is at once
a caricature and a usurpation. But history will not submit
to curtail the true Caesar of his due honour, because her verdict
may in the presence of bad Caesars lead simplicity astray
and may give to roguery occasion for lying and fraud. She too
is a Bible, and if she cannot any more than the Bible hinder the fool
from misunderstanding and the devil from quoting her, she too will
be able to bear with, and to requite, them both.
Dictatorship
The position of the new supreme head of the state appears formally,
at least in the first instance, as a dictatorship. Caesar took
it up at first after his return from Spain in 705, but laid it down
again after a few days, and waged the decisive campaign of 706
simply as consul--this was the office his tenure of which was
the primary occasion for the outbreak of the civil war.(7)
but in the autumn of this year after the battle of Pharsalus
he reverted to the dictatorship and had it repeatedly entrusted to him,
at first for an undefined period, but from the 1st January 709
as an annual office, and then in January or February 710(8)
for the duration of his life, so that he in the end expressly dropped
the earlier reservation as to his laying down the office and gave
formal expression to its tenure for life in the new title of -dictator
perpetuus-. This dictatorship, both in its first ephemeral
and in its second enduring tenure, was not that of the old constitution,
but--what was coincident with this merely in the name--the supreme
exceptional office as arranged by Sulla;(9) an office,
the functions of which were fixed, not by the constitutional ordinances
regarding the supreme single magistracy, but by special decree
of the people, to such an effect that the holder received,
in the commission to project laws and to regulate the commonwealth,
an official prerogative de jure unlimited which superseded
the republican partition of powers. Those were merely applications
of this general prerogative to the particular case, when the holder
of power was further entrusted by separate acts with the right
of deciding on war and peace without consulting the senate
and the people, with the independent disposal of armies and finances,
and with the nomination of the provincial governors. Caesar could
accordingly de jure assign to himself even such prerogatives
as lay outside of the proper functions of the magistracy and even
outside of the province of state-powers at all;(10) and it appears
almost as a concession on his part, that he abstained from nominating
the magistrates instead of the Comitia and limited himself to claiming
a binding right of proposal for a proportion of the praetors
and of the lower magistrates; and that he moreover had himself
empowered by special decree of the people for the creation of patricians,
which was not at all allowable according to use and wont.
Other Magistracies and Attributions
For other magistracies in the proper sense there remained alongside
of this dictatorship no room; Caesar did not take up the censorship
as such,(11) but he doubtless exercised censorial rights--
particularly the important right of nominating senators--after
a comprehensive fashion.
He held the consulship frequently alongside of the dictatorship,
once even without colleague; but he by no means attached it permanently
to his person, and he gave no effect to the calls addressed to him
to undertake it for five or even for ten years in succession.
Caesar had no need to have the superintendence of worship
now committed to him, since he was already -pontifex maximus-.(12)
as a matter of course the membership of the college of augurs
was conferred on him, and generally an abundance of old and new
honorary rights, such as the title of a "father of the fatherland,"
the designation of the month of his birth by the name which it
still bears of Julius, and other manifestations of the incipient
courtly tone which ultimately ran into utter deification.
Two only of the arrangements deserve to be singled out:
namely that Caesar was placed on the same footing with the tribunes
of the people as regards their special personal inviolability,
and that the appellation of Imperator was permanently attached
to his person and borne by him as a title alongside of
his other official designations.
Men of judgment will not require any proof, either that Caesar
intended to engraft on the commonwealth his supreme power,
and this not merely for a few years or even as a personal office
for an indefinite period somewhat like Sulla's regency,
but as an essential and permanent organ; or that he selected
for the new institution an appropriate and simple designation;
for, if it is a political blunder to create names without substantial
meaning, it is scarcely a less error to set up the substance
of plenary power without a name. Only it is not easy to determine
what definitive formal shape Caesar had in view; partly because
in this period of transition the ephemeral and the permanent buildings
are not clearly discriminated from each other, partly because
the devotion of his clients which already anticipated the nod
of their master loaded him with a multitude--offensive doubtless
to himself--of decrees of confidence and laws conferring honours.
Least of all could the new monarchy attach itself to the consulship,
just on account of the collegiate character that could not well
be separated from this office; Caesar also evidently laboured
to degrade this hitherto supreme magistracy into an empty title,
and subsequently, when he undertook it, he did not hold it
through the whole year, but before the year expired gave it away
to personages of secondary rank. The dictatorship came practically
into prominence most frequently and most definitely, but probably
only because Caesar wished to use it in the significance which it had
of old in the constitutional machinery--as an extraordinary presidency
for surmounting extraordinary crises. On the other hand it was
far from recommending itself as an expression for the new monarchy,
for the magistracy was inherently clothed with an exceptional
and unpopular character, and it could hardly be expected
of the representative of the democracy that he should choose
for its permanent organization that form, which the most gifted champion
of the opposing party had created for his own ends.
The new name of Imperator, on the other hand, appears in every respect
by far more appropriate for the formal expression of the monarchy;
just because it is in this application(13) new, and no definite
outward occasion for its introduction is apparent. The new wine
might not be put into old bottles; here is a new name for the new thing,
and that name most pregnantly sums up what the democratic party
had already expressed in the Gabinian law, only with less precision,
as the function of its chief--the concentration and perpetuation
of official power (-imperium-) in the hands of a popular chief
independent of the senate. We find on Caesar's coins,
especially those of the last period, alongside of the dictatorship
the title of Imperator prevailing, and in Caesar's law
as to political crimes the monarch seems to have been designated
by this name. Accordingly the following times, though not immediately,
connected the monarchy with the name of Imperator. To lend
to this new office at once a democratic and religious sanction,
Caesar probably intended to associate with it once for all
on the one hand the tribunician power, on the other
the supreme pontificate.
That the new organization was not meant to be restricted merely
to the lifetime of its founder, is beyond doubt; but he did not succeed
in settling the especially difficult question of the succession,
and it must remain an undecided point whether he had it in view
to institute some sort of form for the election of a successor,
such as had subsisted in the case of the original kingly office,
or whether he wished to introduce for the supreme office
not merely the tenure for life but also the hereditary character,
as his adopted son subsequently maintained.(14) It is not improbable
that he had the intention of combining in some measure the two systems,
and of arranging the succession, similarly to the course
followed by Cromwell and by Napoleon, in such a way that the ruler
should be succeeded in rule by his son, but, if he had no son,
or the son should not seem fitted for the succession, the ruler should
of his free choice nominate his successor in the form of adoption.
In point of state law the new office of Imperator was based
on the position which the consuls or proconsuls occupied
outside of the -pomerium-, so that primarily the military command,
but, along with this, the supreme judicial and consequently
also the administrative power, were included in it.(15)
But the authority of the Imperator was qualitatively superior
to the consular-proconsular, in so far as the former was not limited
as respected time or space, but was held for life and operative also
in the capital;(16) as the Imperator could not, while the consul could,
be checked by colleagues of equal power; and as all the restrictions
placed in course of time on the original supreme official power--
especially the obligation to give place to the -provocatio-
and to respect the advice of the senate--did not apply
to the Imperator.
Re-establishment of the Regal Office
In a word, this new office of Imperator was nothing else
than the primitive regal office re-established; for it was
those very restrictions--as respected the temporal and local
limitation of power, the collegiate arrangement, and the cooperation
of the senate or the community that was necessary for certain cases--
which distinguished the consul from the king.(17) There is hardly
a trait of the new monarchy which was not found in the old:
the union of the supreme military, judicial, and administrative authority
in the hands of the prince; a religious presidency over the commonwealth;
the right of issuing ordinances with binding power; the reduction
of the senate to a council of state; the revival of the patriciate
and of the praefecture of the city. But still more striking
than these analogies is the internal similarity of the monarchy
of Servius Tullius and the monarchy of Caesar; if those
old kings of Rome with all their plenitude of power had yet
been rulers of a free community and themselves the protectors
of the commons against the nobility, Caesar too had not come
to destroy liberty but to fulfil it, and primarily to break
the intolerable yoke of the aristocracy. Nor need it surprise us
that Caesar, anything but a political antiquary, went back
five hundred years to find the model for his new state; for,
seeing that the highest office of the Roman commonwealth had remained
at all times a kingship restricted by a number of special laws,
the idea of the regal office itself had by no means become obsolete.
At very various periods and from very different sides--
in the decemviral power, in the Sullan regency, and in Caesar's
own dictatorship--there had been during the republic a practical
recurrence to it; indeed by a certain logical necessity,
whenever an exceptional power seemed requisite there emerged,
in contradistinction to the usual limited -imperium-,
the unlimited -imperium- which was simply nothing else
than the regal power.
Lastly, outward considerations also recommended this recurrence
to the former kingly position. Mankind have infinite difficulty
in reaching new creations, and therefore cherish the once developed forms
as sacred heirlooms. Accordingly Caesar very judiciously
connected himself with Servius Tullius, in the same way
as subsequently Charlemagne connected himself with Caesar,
and Napoleon attempted at least to connect himself with Charlemagne.
He did so, not in a circuitous way and secretly, but, as well as
his successors, in the most open manner possible; it was indeed
the very object of this connection to find a clear, national,
and popular form of expression for the new state. From ancient times
there stood on the Capitol the statues of those seven kings,
whom the conventional history of Rome was wont to bring on the stage;
Caesar ordered his own to be erected beside them as the eighth.
He appeared publicly in the costume of the old kings of Alba.
In his new law as to political crimes the principal variation
from that of Sulla was, that there was placed alongside
of the collective community, and on a level with it, the Imperator
as the living and personal expression of the people. In the formula
used for political oaths there was added to the Jovis and the Penates
of the Roman people the Genius of the Imperator. The outward badge
of monarchy was, according to the view univerally diffused in antiquity,
the image of the monarch on the coins; from the year 710
the head of Caesar appears on those of the Roman state.
There could accordingly be no complaint at least on the score
that Caesar left the public in the dark as to his view of his position;
as distinctly and as formally as possible he came forward
not merely as monarch, but as very king of Rome. It is possible even,
although not exactly probable, and at any rate of subordinate
importance, that he had it in view to designate his official power
not with the new name of Imperator, but directly with the old one
of King.(18) Even in his lifetime many of his enemies as of his friends
were of opinion that he intended to have himself expressly nominated
king of Rome; several indeed of his most vehement adherents
suggested to him in different ways and at different times
that he should assume the crown; most strikingly of all,
Marcus Antonius, when he as consul offered the diadem to Caesar
before all the people (15 Feb. 710). But Caesar rejected
these proposals without exception at once. If he at the same time
took steps against those who made use of these incidents to stir
republican opposition, it by no means follows from this that he was not
in earnest with his rejection. The assumption that these invitations
took place at his bidding, with the view of preparing the multitude
for the unwonted spectacle of the Roman diadem, utterly misapprehends
the mighty power of the sentimental opposition with which
Caesar had to reckon, and which could not be rendered more compliant,
but on the contrary necessarily gained a broader basis,
through such a public recognition of its warrant on the part
of Caesar himself. It may have been the uncalled-for zeal of vehement
adherents alone that occasioned these incidents; it may be also,
that Caesar merely permitted or even suggested the scene with Antonius,
in order to put an end in as marked a manner as possible
to the inconvenient gossip by a declinature which took place
before the eyes of the burgesses and was inserted by his command
even in the calendar of the state and could not, in fact,
be well revoked. The probability is that Caesar, who appreciated alike
the value of a convenient formal designation and the antipathies
of the multitude which fasten more on the names than on the essence
of things, was resolved to avoid the name of king as tainted
with an ancient curse and as more familiar to the Romans of his time
when applied to the despots of the east than to their own Numa
and Servius, and to appropriate the substance of the regal office
under the title of Imperator.